Feel this country has become rotten - benefits

[She11y]

A studio apartment in my area is about £800 per month.
A minim wage job is around £1500 per month net.
After you've worked in a hard and demanding job - most minimum wage jobs are demanding - you've got £700 to pay for food, travel, bills, clothes.
You might end up with £100 left over each month. Working hard all your life with no hope of owning your own home or having any sort of financial stability.
No wonder people don't want to work. Make owninf a house affordable and over night 1/3 the people claiming benefits will stop.

My point is that a lot of people are on benefits because they're depressed at the hopelessness of their futures, and try to avoid working.

If that’s minimum wage going forward then no healthy adult should be on benefits exceeding that in my opinion. It shouldn’t pay to sit on benefits.

This.

14 years is a long time. So much was left to rot in thst time

Someone has to do the minimum wage jobs.

Not everyone has the soft skills to progress.

Some jobs that require quite a lot of education, experiencd and skills and are still 'low paid' if not minimum wage.

I know i'm going to get flamed for this, but surely the point is to build a career of some kind and not be on minimum wage forever? I know that's easier said than done, for many reasons, for a lot of people.

I do understand that that house prices need to stabilise and salaries to catch up in order to make housing more affordable. But the fact remains that if you earn the minimum amount of money, then that will only ever afford you the minimum kid of lifestyle.

I don't think a single person on a minimum wage job necessarily should be having enough for solo occupancy of a studio flat plus comfortable lifestyle. Minimum wage should be enough to pay for a single room in an HMO, where sharing the burden of bills and utilities is much cheaper than for a single-occupancy home, and in some cases there's also potential to save on the food budget too as it's much cheaper for 6 people in an HMO to each take turns to cook for 6 on one day per week than it is for 6 people to cook 6 individual meals each night.

National Insurance contributions from all employers are then rightly used to top up the minimum wage to something enough for a flat rather than HMO if the minimum wage earner is responsible for a child

The scandal is that so many non-minimum-wage jobs are barely a few pence above. It should be easier to get a better lifestyle with increased hard work and responsibility.

That’s ridiculous.

1 in 7 16-24 year olds are NEET.

No one with any sense starts their first minimum wage job imagining that that will be their wage forever. They see it as a stepping stone.

No young person needs their own ‘studio flat’, house shares are available and what most of us started with

I really sympathise with people who cannot work, but not working because ‘you might as well be in benefits’ is very very shortsighted.

And it’s something I see a lot on here. Women who give up work for f/t childcare because if the childcare costs or ‘benefits’ argument… and forgetting the potential for promotion, wage rises, pension payments, professional development/ training etc, never mind the burden on the tax payer.

FFS, people lived through the Jarrow marches, 2 world wars, the massive unemployment of the 70s and didn’t flop about like this.

I will fight and campaign for our while welfare state to pick up those in need but not the needlessly pathetic.

It does feel utterly depressing. DH and I worked really hard at school, reasonably bright, went to uni, both work full time (despite both having a disability) in mid level jobs with what used to feel like a fairly decent salary. The cost of living increase has hammered so many people. Our council tax bill alone is 3.5k this year, on a fairly average 3 bed house in an average town. We used to be reasonably comfortable - we drive oldish cars and don't go on foreign holidays, we don't buy clothes etc for ourselves, only clothes and shoes for our oldest, and youngest gets hand me downs. But when a standard bill comes in - this month it's our car Insurance of £600 for both cars, which we need to get to work- we are stressing about how to pay it as both of us are spending our full pay on just the basics, plus a few bits for our girls.

I can see several posts saying "well the idea is to work harder and get a decent paid job", we did this, and still quite stretched, paying lots in tax whilst waiting a year + for essential surgery, our girls state primary is struggling due to reduced funding under this government, road is full of potholes etc. I can see why many middle earners are considering leaving the UK, we work our butts off for little gain.

Absolutely. For my first 5 years working I shared houses with 2-3 friends. Much more affordable, and better for mental health.

Yes, the real scandal is that people who have worked hard for many years are still struggling to afford the basics, whilst receiving mediocre at best public services

Really? So you want millions of people to work to fund the insane incomes of the owners of HMOs while essentially living in a bedroom relying on strangers to pool food money? These are people working full time! Why are they not worthy of a place of their own?

I also think that people disregard the effects of the stigma of benefits. Hearing themselves called shirkers and scum all the time does nothing to help people move into work. Giving someone a character assassination and then expecting them to pass an interview is frankly, stupid.

So often lack of confidence and fear of failure is mistaken for laziness, which perpetuates a cycle of people who, underneath the bravado, genuinely don't believe they're of any use to anyone and don't want to put themselves out there to be proved correct.

It's the selling off of council housing in the 80s that's led to this.

And wages that need to be higher. The majority of people claiming benefits are in work, which is a nonsense.

One wage should be able to provide a decent home and enable a family to live, in my opinion. Big companies are getting away with paying minimum wage while tax payers top up the employees' wages. How is that right?

Exactly right.

Either way you won’t have much money, but if some is not working, at least their time is their own to manage in their own way. It’s a way to take a little control back.

It has always been incredibly expensive to live on your own.

However, I do think the fear mongering, government-led, mind games around covid had the effect of inducing a sense of helplessness that has tipped a significant portion of those who were vulnerable and just-coping, over the edge into complete hopelessness and apathy.

I don't think 'rotten' is very helpful language.

I think we have a real and long-standing problem with productivity in this country and unless it's solved, we'll never get out of the economic doldrums.

I think the % of people who go on benefits just to 'work the system' is miniscule. I think being reliant on the state for your income, and therefore your freedom, is a horrible and stressful way to live.

I think there are certain mental illnesses which could actually be alleviated rather than worsened by being in productive work, with the right support.

I believe working enhances self-esteem and one's sense of independence and freedom.

I think being <25 and on benefits is a sad situation because that person will likely never get off it. Because they don't develop a skill set. So, Starmer is absolutely right to focus on that age cohort. Because they deserve to have a nice life, with the freedom and self-respect that working brings.

I think the vast majority of disabled people would love to work if they had the right support and access.

So I think the government should be offering a carrot as well as a stick approach to get as many people into work as possible.

Ok. Are people no longer house/flat sharing? I did that until I was 34 and I was on about £30k then (this was 12 years ago).

A lot of people are claiming benefits while working because they couldn't afford their extortionate rents otherwise. Not really their fault, is it? 🤷‍♀️

My son teaches in London and some of his fellow teachers are in their 40s and still living in a room in a house share because that's all they can afford in London.

Full time teachers.

QE and related monetary policies have detached house prices completely from salaries. It is a very big problem. I believe it's one of the key reasons why we are seeing an uptick in Gen Z and Gen A embracing far left and far right ideologies.

Because if liberal free market capitalism will visibly not work for you, why espouse it?

there is very little effective "professional help" for depression. Medication may take the edge off, may enable you to get out of bed. But it doesn't give you motivation, energy, ambition, hope or positivity. Imagine trying to compete against other candidates at an interview, to sparkle and impress, when you are permanently on the verge of tears and feel sick to your core with hopelessness.
Im depressed. I've been on sertraline for a year, fluoxetine before that. I've had 40 sessions of counselling. I'm still depressed.
If living costs were lower, that would remove a large part of the struggle, the hopelessness and the grind of my daily life. If there was some help for my adult son with his multiple mental health diagnoses- including anxiety, depression, Personality disorder and psychosis, then I think I would feel a lot better too.
NhS mental health care is very, very, very poor but the DWP are refusing/unable to deal with the consequences.

I don't understand how people don't see the long term picture. When my kids were small I had 2 in nursery and my monthly salary effectively paid for that. Yes I could have stopped working and gone on benefits and maybe for that year and the next I would have been better off financially. But I was also

• building pension contributions via work for a comfortable old age not reliant on the state pension
• establishing myself in the early years of my career, such that I was in a position to get promoted posts and projects of interest to me
• showing my children that women can work, enjoy that work, and still be a good enough parent.

If I had stopped work for 5 years I would have 5 years less in my pension pot, and be 5 years behind on my career progression.

Through my work, I have recently met a few fit and healthy people, working 2 days per week flexible hours (which makes it impossible to seek employment the other days as they never know if / when they'll be available), claiming top up benefits

Employers shouldn't be allowed to tie up employees who could be out working and supporting themselves

The country has been left to rot and gutted by neoliberal governments since 1979, with no break at all. We just noticed it more with the last Tory government because it was becoming harder to ignore. The country has been mismanaged since Thatcher got her hands on power, it's tragic.

He'd probably be one of the people we see in those countries sleeping in a little shelter on the pavement and begging for food. If he was still alive that is. Is that the kind of country you want to live in?

This argument works for people in a professional role, with prospects of higher salary in future

Not so much for a cleaner on min wage

The government is trying to get us to punch down rather than punch up, to avoid us looking at where the real problem lies. And it seems to be working. "Oh no, Louise down the road went to Thorpe Park last week, when she shouldn't be allowed because she's on benefits". Meanwhile corporations use our country's infrastructure and pay no tax and the ultra rich buy up empty properties for investment purposes and strip the country of assets to hide in the Cayman Islands. But that Louise, she has three kids and a flatscreen TV (as if there's any other kind these days). Fucking get her.

The system needs an overhaul that puts in place some fundamental rules. There needs to be a revolutionary approach to how we view the job market.

• Nobody who doesn't work should receive more than or the same in benefits as the take-home pay of the lowest-paid 37.5 hour/week worker.
• Minimum wage should be set at a level that allows someone to live a comfortable lifestyle and save for their future.
• The government should act as an employer of last resort, offering paid (minimum wage) work for anyone who cannot find paid work themselves.

We need to accept that a fair society means those who choose not to work can be left to fail. That's not society's problem. Rather than funding them, the money should be spent on people who are willing to work.

How will Labour’s welfare cuts help?